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ROBERT DEWITT: There’s nothing new about recent voting scandal

By Robert DeWittOutdoors Writer | The Tuscaloosa News

Published: Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at 10:00 p.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at 10:42 p.m.

I understand the frustration people feel about the recent Tuscaloosa City Board of Education race in which University of Alabama students turned out en masse to vote in an election they most likely know nothing about. It demonstrates exactly why this country’s founders created a republic and not a democracy.

Like it or not, the Founding Fathers never intended for this country to have universal suffrage. Forget the fact that voting was limited to white males for a moment. The founders in no way intended for all white males to vote. It’s pretty clear that they intended for property ownership to be a prerequisite for citizenship.

The idea was for citizens to have some stake in the country. A person with no stake might simply decide to vote in favor of a candidate who promised to redistribute the public treasury to the people who voted for him.

That money, of course, would originate with those who did have property. It would eventually become a vicious circle of people voting to pay themselves more and more from the public treasury and the politicians they elected would take more and more from the people who had the money.

It does have a familiar ring.

The students who flocked to the polls are probably mostly from affluent families and don’t have any designs on electing school board members who will divert school funds to the voters. It’s suspected that most of them went to the polls and voted because their fraternity and sorority leadership told them to.

For people who are actually interested in city schools and improving education for their children, that is frustrating. Why should a group of disinterested voters get to trudge into the polls motivated by nothing more than marching orders and thwart the will of people with children in the school system and owners of property, the value of which is determined largely by the school board’s actions?

And most of the engaged and interested voters find it shocking how easily students became eligible to vote in the city election. They seem able to secure any old address in the district and become a voter.

It might be a little easier to stomach if the bloc voting students really cared enough to get off their pampered behinds and go to the polls. They could at least put out the effort to get in their cars and drive, or maybe even walk or take a city bus. Instead, they’re carried to the polls in a limousine, trucked there like high-priced cattle to mindlessly make their mark beside the name of one of two candidates they know little or nothing about. It was probably the money that came from those political action committees receiving donations from some company in Delaware that paid for the limo, too.

The kicker is that some of them were offered free drinks if they went to the polls. It’s little more than shameless vote buying. It’s the kind of thing you just don’t stand for because it can undermine democratic elections and representative government.

So, are we really going to sit here and pretend that there’s anything new about this, at all? We’ve had voters basically handing over a proxy to groups like the Alabama New South Coalition, the Alabama Education Association, the Alabama Democratic Conference and even labor unions for years. They get their marching orders and they go into the polls and vote.

The voters are so disinterested and disengaged that they need color-coded sample ballots to figure out who they’re going to vote for. It makes voting easy so they don’t have to be informed about individual candidates. They figure out with which group they’re going to cast their lot and then learn the color of that group’s sample ballots. They get that group’s color-coded ballot, go into the polls and mark the names corresponding to the names on the color-coded sample ballot.

It’s not like many of these voters are super-motivated to get to the polls. That’s why no Alabama election would be complete without a fleet of passenger vans. It might lack the panache of a limousine, but it gets the job done. Candidates usually pay affiliates of one of the color-coded-ballot groups a “get-out-the-vote fee” to help defray the vans’ cost.

And if you don’t think people have ever been offered a drink or some other inducement in exchange for getting in one of those passenger vans, you’re sadly mistaken.

There have been calls on the University of Alabama to crack down on students and tell them not to interfere with city elections they have no stake in. There have been calls on the city and board of registrars to make sure that people meet residency requirements.

It’s best to be careful about what you demand. These days when you advocate common-sense measures like requiring someone to show a picture identification at the polls to prove they are who they say they are and that they actually live in the jurisdiction where they are voting, you get accused of “voter suppression.” That’s because voter fraud doesn’t really exist, now does it?

Robert DeWitt is senior writer for The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at robert.

<p>I understand the frustration people feel about the recent Tuscaloosa City Board of Education race in which University of Alabama students turned out en masse to vote in an election they most likely know nothing about. It demonstrates exactly why this country's founders created a republic and not a democracy.</p><p>Like it or not, the Founding Fathers never intended for this country to have universal suffrage. Forget the fact that voting was limited to white males for a moment. The founders in no way intended for all white males to vote. It's pretty clear that they intended for property ownership to be a prerequisite for citizenship.</p><p>The idea was for citizens to have some stake in the country. A person with no stake might simply decide to vote in favor of a candidate who promised to redistribute the public treasury to the people who voted for him.</p><p>That money, of course, would originate with those who did have property. It would eventually become a vicious circle of people voting to pay themselves more and more from the public treasury and the politicians they elected would take more and more from the people who had the money.</p><p>It does have a familiar ring.</p><p>The students who flocked to the polls are probably mostly from affluent families and don't have any designs on electing school board members who will divert school funds to the voters. It's suspected that most of them went to the polls and voted because their fraternity and sorority leadership told them to.</p><p>For people who are actually interested in city schools and improving education for their children, that is frustrating. Why should a group of disinterested voters get to trudge into the polls motivated by nothing more than marching orders and thwart the will of people with children in the school system and owners of property, the value of which is determined largely by the school board's actions?</p><p>And most of the engaged and interested voters find it shocking how easily students became eligible to vote in the city election. They seem able to secure any old address in the district and become a voter.</p><p>It might be a little easier to stomach if the bloc voting students really cared enough to get off their pampered behinds and go to the polls. They could at least put out the effort to get in their cars and drive, or maybe even walk or take a city bus. Instead, they're carried to the polls in a limousine, trucked there like high-priced cattle to mindlessly make their mark beside the name of one of two candidates they know little or nothing about. It was probably the money that came from those political action committees receiving donations from some company in Delaware that paid for the limo, too.</p><p>The kicker is that some of them were offered free drinks if they went to the polls. It's little more than shameless vote buying. It's the kind of thing you just don't stand for because it can undermine democratic elections and representative government.</p><p>So, are we really going to sit here and pretend that there's anything new about this, at all? We've had voters basically handing over a proxy to groups like the Alabama New South Coalition, the Alabama Education Association, the Alabama Democratic Conference and even labor unions for years. They get their marching orders and they go into the polls and vote.</p><p>The voters are so disinterested and disengaged that they need color-coded sample ballots to figure out who they're going to vote for. It makes voting easy so they don't have to be informed about individual candidates. They figure out with which group they're going to cast their lot and then learn the color of that group's sample ballots. They get that group's color-coded ballot, go into the polls and mark the names corresponding to the names on the color-coded sample ballot.</p><p>It's not like many of these voters are super-motivated to get to the polls. That's why no Alabama election would be complete without a fleet of passenger vans. It might lack the panache of a limousine, but it gets the job done. Candidates usually pay affiliates of one of the color-coded-ballot groups a “get-out-the-vote fee” to help defray the vans' cost.</p><p>And if you don't think people have ever been offered a drink or some other inducement in exchange for getting in one of those passenger vans, you're sadly mistaken.</p><p>There have been calls on the University of Alabama to crack down on students and tell them not to interfere with city elections they have no stake in. There have been calls on the city and board of registrars to make sure that people meet residency requirements.</p><p>It's best to be careful about what you demand. These days when you advocate common-sense measures like requiring someone to show a picture identification at the polls to prove they are who they say they are and that they actually live in the jurisdiction where they are voting, you get accused of “voter suppression.” That's because voter fraud doesn't really exist, now does it?</p><p>Robert DeWitt is senior writer for The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at robert.</p><p>dewitt@tuscaloosanews.com.</p>